Johnny, My Dead Hamster
by Cat In My Fridge
Summary: Leon opened the door, and there was a boy he'd never seen before standing on his front porch. Leon/Sora. WIP.
1. In Which Leon Receives a Boy FedEx

**+ Johnny, My Dead Hamster +  
**

**+ Chapter 1/? +**

* * *

Leon opened the door, and there was a boy he had never seen before standing on his front porch.

Leon blinked.

The boy blinked back.

Finding a boy on his door step was unusual for a number of reasons, not least of which that Leon himself, newly a quarter of a century old, was himself no longer a boy. Just a few days ago Aerith had flicked away his first gray hair with a twinkle in her eyes and a nonchalant, "Grandpa Leon, hah."

"Hi," the boy said, thankfully shredding the hateful image of a gloating Aerith.

Leon blinked, attention swirling back to the boy.

An unsure smile was playing around the boy's lips, as if he was afraid that Leon would smash the door into his face any second now.

Which was closer to the truth than he probably knew.

"U-Um," the boy began, cocking his head to the side and giving Leon a tentative smile. "U-Um."

And that's when Leon did what comes most natural to people with his kind of social competency. Which is, saying "I'm not buying anything," and then proceeding to close the door without another word, until –

A tattered white sneaker stepped into the track of the door. "Whoa." The boy was holding up his hands like a bank robber post deed. "Whoa, wait. Wait, I'm not – I'm not selling anything."

Leon let out an eloquent groan and let the door creak open again.

The boy's brunette hair was glistening, his baby blue hoodie sagging around him. It took Leon a second to put two and two and surmise that it was raining.

A beat, and Leon said, "I don't need to be saved either. In fact, I'm a satanist about to perform a – a ritual with Latin hymns and chicken blood." That had been Aerith's advice as well: to claim you're a satanist when cornered by those 'YOU'RE GOING TO HELL' bumper sticker sporting and tin can wielding religious people in the street.

(Sometimes, Leon wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was just fucking with him. However, he was not about to test this theory in a situation where her advice might actually come in handy for once).

The boy – blinked. A small smile tugged at the corners of his eyes that reached his eyes and spilled out of them in azure blue-hued amazement. "Oh. Oh, that's – that's cool. I guess." And then he actually started to _bounce_ on his feet, and Leon dimly noticed how his glistening hair ebbed and flowed in a wave. "Can I watch?"

"What?" Leon blurted.

The boy's eyebrows quirked up as he attempted to wriggle himself past Leon. "The ritual," he said, in a way that one would use to say, '_the beeeeeach, dude_'.

And then Leon actually hesitated, because there was – there was something about this boy that didn't sit well with Leon, there was something that – reminded him of someone, and he just couldn't figure out who – (surely it couldn't have been that boy on the cover of last week's special report about drug-addicted, unemployed youths he had seen on the issue of _Twilight Sun _lying crumbled in his backyard –)

_He's slipping out of his sneakers_, some part of Leon's brain registered. And then he was shaking his head and spraying glistening drops of rain everywhere.

Most importantly, he was doing all of this inside Leon's house.

"What are you doing in my house?" If the sharpness of these words could have left a physical wound, the boy would be bending over clutching his gashing stomach wound right now.

The boy looked up now, surprise broadening his features, driving his large blue eyes adorably out of focus. "Dude," he said, slowly, as if testing his voice after a long period of not using it, "you don't know who I am, do you?"

Okay, or maybe just a paper cut.

"No," Leon snapped. A beat. "Also, I'm not called 'dude'."

"Ya, I know," the boy said, bending down, picking up his discarded sneakers and aligning them, right next to where they had left glistening arcs of wetness on Leon's linoleum tiles.

Leon's eyebrows twitched at the sight.

"I know," the boy repeated, straightening his spine and meeting Leon's eyes. "You're Leon."

Leon rubbed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, the red carpet of his imagination rolling out in front of him, deranged teenage drug addicts waltzing down along it. If Cloud heard about this --

"Cloud sent me," the boy said.

Leon's brain immediately leapt to panic without stepping by logic's for a cup of tea. "Cloud?" He took a step closer, alarm perched atop his voice. "What's wrong with him?"

The boy blinked, smoothed down his baby blue hoodie and started to shift his weight on his socked feet. "Um. No. Nothing's wrong with him." The first hint of pink settled in his cheeks. "Cloud told me to come here. He said," and with that he drew his eyebrows into a frown and lowered his voice a few octaves, grumbling, "'Go to my friend Leon if you need a place to sleep.'" His features softened, smile breaking his lips and flashing a wink of white teeth. "That's what he said."

"That's what he said," Leon repeated dumbly.

"Yeah, that's what he said." The boys eyes slid to a point somewhere behind Leon, pupils dilating.

Leon's eyes fell to the floor, voice drowning out. "Cloud did, huh? Well, then. But who – _hey_?!" He spun around, catching the boy-shaped silhouette speeding down the hallway toward the kitchen. "Hey, where do you think you are --"

Second later, they had both flung themselves into Leon's brightly-lit kitchen, and the boy had his nose in the air – and by God, it was _wriggling, _by God it was, wriggling like a – like a –

"Eh, sorry, Leon," the boy said, eyes flexed upon the fruit tray sitting in the corner of the kitchen counter. "I was just --"

A rumbling sound suspiciously emanating from the boy's stomach tore through the kitchen.

'_Oops_' expression layered over his features, the boy snapped down his head to glance at his stomach. Then, he threw Leon an apologetic look, complete with the drawn shoulders and the eyebrows sloping down at the outer corners and – that damn nose of his was wriggling again.

Leon continued another doomed-to-failure negotiation with his blood pressure. "Fine," he pressed out. "Eat. _But,_" he added quickly before this wet ball of energy could pounce on the fruit bowl, "First, who are you?"

"Oh." The boy breathed. Then, his eyes widened. "Oh! Right. Oh, right."

He stuck out his hand then, small and sun-kissed and with those boyish fingers that were broader at the tip than the base and proclaimed, "I'm Sora."

Leon frowned, looking at the outstretched palm. He wasn't going to take that palm yet. He still wasn't 100% certain that the boy wasn't an oversized toddler with a hunch for playing with arsenic. And possibly radioactive.

"Sore-ah," Leon repeated.

The boy shook his head, messy brown bangs whipping his face. "Close, but nah. _So-ra_."

A beat. "So-ra," Leon said, in the skeptical way that one uses to humor a punk-haired eccentric when they proudly proclaim to be the living and breathing incarnation of Kurt Cobain.

"Yeah," the boy said – for his part, in a tone that one could have used to say, '_awesome_'. "Uh," he said, raising his head to scratch the back of his head, "That is – my parents were in some sort of cult when I was born. It's a long story. Probably involving chicken blood and Latin hymns. But hey, it's not me but bro who drew the ass card this time – at least I'm not called _Cloud_."

"Oh," Leon said. "So I guess you are Cloud's brother." A frown. "Not Roxas-brother, though." He hadn't known Cloud even _had_ a brother other than that other scowling ball of doom that Axel was attached to like he was some sort of umbilical extension.

"Yeah. Not Roxas-brother." The boy fidgeted then, toes nudging the floor, hand shaking in the air, blue talons of his eyes yanking on Leon's.

Leon didn't know then that this would be the beginning when he sighed, uncrossed his arms, and took the boy's hand into his for a small shake. He didn't know then that everything would spin out like thread from an infinite spool held in the milk-white palm of Sora on an otherwise ordinary evening in mid-autumn.

He didn't know then, but he had this _feeling_.

And then, after they had shaken hands with the kind of grim expression of an Indian chieftain accepting collaboration with a rival tribe whose bones he'd much rather use to fertilize his fields with (on Leon's part) and the sunniest smile this side of town (on Sora's), they broke apart in silence, Sora shoveling down all of the fruit Leon possessed before moving on his bread, pasta and even the Halloween candy he kept stashed away at the bottom of his drawer, and Leon wondering with the eyes of a man who was waiting for the King's decision whether he would be hanged or awarded a Medal of Honor.

Then the boy flashed him another one of those _smile _that made his damn nose wriggle in a damn familiar way that Leon couldn't place and therefore hated.

And Leon looked away.

* * *

Leon came from a relatively wealthy family, and while 'wealthy' was sadly not synonymous with 'sane' in any way, shape or form, he figured he'd drawn a pretty okay ticket in the family lottery, overall.

Despite his father Laguna having _once again_ proven the fact that former action stars with syrupy accents shouldn't be governors (if he had to have Laguna's famous movie line, "I'll be back, Dragonzzz!" quoted back to him _one more time_...) and _despite_ his stepmother Edea adopting children with a gotta-catch-'em-all Pokemon attitude and having a penchant for dressing up like a bartender at the transvestite version of _Moulin Rouge –_

_Despite_ all that, Leon loved his parents, they loved him, and Leon's childhood and teen years had been pleasant, if not exactly normal. As with most young adults, though, the fact that his home had been rather stable didn't mean that he fancied living with his parents any more than he fancied having his attachment to his artfully-arranged belts removed, which had prompted young Leon to pack his bags and move to Traverse Town the spring he had turned 18.

His parents had both cried the day that Leon had moved out, though Leon to this day insisted that the wetness in his own eyes had been from the rain drops gathering in his lashes and trickling down along his face, no _really_. The parting gifts he'd gotten from his parents had been as ecletic and indulgent as they were: a pack of condoms with a hand-written note ("Just in case you ever feel the ugre, be save, and remember dady loves you!" and yes, complete with spelling mistakes), underwear of questionable masculinity and a sweet assurance that yes, _of course_, pink kittens cuddling giant hearts was a suitable thing to wear for an 18-year old boy, and -- oh, and a house. A generous one, set in the heart of Twilight Town.

The rain drops had gotten a lot more persistent at that point. Stubborn little bastards.

But well, due to previously outlined circumstances of wealth, Leon was fortunately (or perhaps rather unfortunately) able to store all five-foot-six, approximately 130 pounds of BOY in a guest room located just on the opposite side of the master bedroom.

Which is where we re-join our heroes, oh joy.

"Your room." Leon pointed at the door. Then at the white door down the hall with a the picture of a hamster on it, courtesy by the ever-loving Aerith. "Toilet." A beat. "Don't make a mess."

"Um," Sora said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Um... I sort of. Hm." He gave a quick, embarrassed laugh that made Leon wonder how he managed to make the place swell like a concert hall with even such a brief sound. "Don't have anything to wear. As in, at all."

Leon paused. Turned back around. Let his eyes travel over the boy standing in the hallway, over the wetness blotched over his hoodie down to his shorts (_and who wore shorts when it rained? Or at all?_) and the baby-smooth calves down to the wrinkled toes beneath tennis socks of questionable cleanliness.

Leon looked back up at his face, noticing that the boy's eyes were blue, almost supernaturally so in the superficial flood of corridor light, creasing and bending with mild embarrassment.

He suddenly became aware of the sound of the rain, a steady sizzle like static in the background.

"Right," Leon said, his voice raw in his throat. Then with a sigh and an undercurrent of 'what in the world did I do to deserve this', "Right."

He turned around and shrugged into his own room, leaving the door open by way of invitation, and stormed over to the closet looming in the corner of the room. He could hear the hesistant creak of the carpet as the boy set foot into the room behind him while Leon yanked open the door and started going through piles of clothes.

"Whoa, your room's so clean," Sora said. "God, mom would _love_ it."

Leon said nothing, too caught-up in his task of finding suitable clothes. The slacks he'd gotten from Cloud for his 25th birthday? Oh, no well in hell he was going to let dirt-streaked boys anywhere _near_ that thing. And something told him Sora wouldn't appreciate any of his leather outfits either (though that made for an interesting mental image, for all the 0.01 seconds Leon allowed himself to entertain it) –

_There._

He unceremoniously flung a bundle green striped pajamas at the boy with an affluent, "Wear this."

"Thanks."

Leon could hear Sora catch the clothes, and didn't need to turn around to visualize him clutching the bundle to his chest as if it were an infant, probably with a sunbeam smile on his face.

"Thanks so much."

Leon looked over at the wall, watching how the last of the sun laminated it with the last rinsed-out ribbon of pink. "Just wear it."

Shuffling of clothes behind him. Too much shuffling. _Screech_, said a zipper and _squeak_, answered something in Leon's head before --

"_Not in here."_

The shuffling stopped. "Oh. I-I'm sorry. I'll – go change in my room, then."

And then the door finally fell back into its hinges and silence descended upon the room, even the drill of the rain on the roof fading into the background. Leon closed his closet, went over to his bed, and let the sheets sigh beneath his weight when he let himself fall flat on his back.

He stared up at the ceiling. And stared. Stared, because he knew that as soon as he let himself contemplate just what exactly had happened today, just when he let it all snap into sharp focus inside the shimmery stream of his consciousness, he would lose his mind, and that would be a bit of a waste.

Even so, he couldn't help but lift his hips off the bed just slightly to let his hands dig into the back pocket of his leather pants, couldn't help but pull out the sleek cell phone and couldn't help but flip it open above him.

The letters of the text message glared down at him.

_'Please take good care of him. I'm sorry for everything. - Cloud'_

But before the emotions could swim to the surface, Leon snapped the phone shut and cut right through them with the precision of a scalpel.

Everything was calm again, quiet again. Even the storm of his chest calmed down enough for Leon to stumble toward a dead sleep when he rolled over onto his side and buried his face into the sheets.

The last thing he thought before falling asleep was that the sheets still sort of smelled like him.

* * *

The next morning, Leon sipped on his coffee and watched the way the rain dripped from the leaves of the oak beyond the window in a long gray linkage of individual beads. It was very much the usual way in which he spent his mornings, except that today had been the first morning since that one night a month ago that he hadn't expected his morning to be usual.

The boy didn't show up.

Leon had considered knocking, he really had – and he had only given up after giving the door the evil eye for so long that he the door had started giving it _back_, and that had truly been too creepy for Leon to put up with any longer.

Hence.

He looked down into his coffee, at the flecks of liquid diamonds the sun poured into it riding the wavelets, and did what he did best. He frowned.

Then, after he had lost count of how many times he'd internally called himself a moron for accepting boy-sized FedExes without so much as even asking for the return address, he got up, wrote a note for Sora (in painstakingly clean letters, of course – he actually cursed and went to prowl for an eraser when he'd sloped his t too far to the right), and, once we was both satisfied with the note and had assured himself that there was a high likelihood he'd find his house in one piece once he came home, left for work.

Because, see. Leon was an artist.

Okay, okay. _Technically_.

Or, perhaps he wasn't so much an artist as he had always been in love with the image of an artist, really. Always been in love with the blue-veined bohemian, the artistic bruises of sleep-deprivation standing like stains beneath weary but fiercely intelligent eyes. Artists, the dreamers of society, the ones both both fluttering high above the ordinary eight-to-five-and-random-cable-movie crowd and tragically pinned to the ground by the scientifically-minded general public.

The reality was nothing like that, of course. To Leon, it was mostly a euphemism for 'teaching credit-starved imbeciles how to draw fruit baskets' and circling the home phone like a vulture in hopes of receiving a phone call from the nearest art publishing company or rich art collector and ascend the ladder to artistic stardom.

Because yeah, being an artist? Not as easy as you'd think.

"Sooo," Axel sing-songed in the hymn of death, emerald eyes slicing from the the espresso machine he was currently operating over to Leon and back before adding in a voice ladled with sugar, "You been hearing anything from Cloud lately?"

Oh yeah, another thing that Leon had to put up at work, other than teaching credit-starved imbeciles how to draw fruit baskets: putting up with co-workers who resembled oversized hedgehogs and liked to dramatize his social life.

Leon had an on-going bet with Demyx if Axel would just one day explode from glee. He figured his chances today were better than usual.

"Where did he run off to again?" Putting his hands on the counter, he rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling in a show of thought. "_Midgar_, wasn't it?"

Leon gave a non-committal shrug.

Axel twirled around on the spot, raising the cup of coffee to his lips.

Leon was pretty sure he did it to hide the grin spreading on his face like a drop of ink spilled on a silk blouse.

"You guys were pretty close." He stopped to take a dramatic sip of coffee. "Just wondering why he hasn't showed up in a while, is all_."_

Leon was _also _pretty sure that he'd be gesturing dramatically right about now if that wouldn't probably involve spilling steaming-hot coffee all over his shirt.

Axel had always had a penchant for the dramatic like that.

"To have him disappear like that, I mean," Axel elaborated, mellifluous inflection pouring forth like syrup. "That must _suck_, man."

Leon pinched his nose. "Axel, you and subtlety don't fucking match."

Axel gave an elaborate shrug, the kind that started in his upper arms, then migrated to his shoulders and made the head perched atop his spine bobble. "All right, then. Just saying you must be butthurt your best friend and the only guy to ever understand your – how did Yuffie put it again?"

"Lack of any discernable enthusiasm for life," Leon said tonelessly.

"Right," Axel said, his index finger flying to point at Leon. "That he – _bang_!" His finger jerked empathetically. "That he left you for that loony ex back in Midgar."

"Thank you for your apt psychological assessment. Have you considered a career as a therapist?"

Axel's face lit up. "I'd be a great fit for that line of career, huh?"

"Sure." Personally, Leon had always thought Axel needed to become a soap opera writer. He was pretty sure he watched that stuff anyway, if the numerous times he'd caught him singing the theme song of '_All my Children_' under his breath was any indication.

Axel gave another one of his elaborate shrugs. "Hey, no need to misunderstood this, yeah?" He took another sip, swallowed, latched his candy-green eyes onto Leon and said, "I was half-expecting you not to catch up on the fact you were butthurt, is all. Considering how _in tune _with your feelings you are."

Leon's eyes darted over to the clock mounted on the wall of the tiny break room, counting down the minutes to the beginning of his next class. _Only five more minutes --_

"And I heard he sent you a brat, too."

Leon blinked.

Axel shrugged again, smug smile pulling across his lips. The summer sun dappled pale red on his wild net of hair. "Yeah, I got the news."

"Who told you?"

Axel bent forward with a grin, coffee cup dangling in his hand. "Guess."

Leon groaned. "Remind me never to make friends with guys with a whole armada of younger brothers _ever_. Again."

Axel grinned, tapping his temple with his index finger. "Got it memorized."

Leon forced himself to down the last of his coffee – _bitter, blah, just a bit more, gotta go to class_ – then scrambled to his feet, collecting the books strewn across the table. He threw a silent greeting to Axel over his shoulder, stalked to the door, flung it open, and was gone.

And then he _wasn't_, because Axel's voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"He got kicked out, you know."

Leon could hear the cup of coffee making a clirring sound as he put it back down on the counter, presumably to continue his tradition of pantomimically underlining every word.

"The kid, I mean. Sora, right?"

"Yeah," Leon said, hand dropping down from the door handle. "Sora."

"Though don't ask me why," Axel said, interrupted by a slurp and a spitting sound. "_Gah_, this coffee tastes like ass."

Leon was mature enough not to say, "_Well, you'd know all about tasting ass now, wouldn't you?_"

But just barely.

"Don't ask me why," Axel repeated, picking up his thread of conversation. "All I heard from Rox was that there was a big fight – _oh_, apparently there was a big screaming match with china breaking and all that shit – and then he was gone. Sora, I mean. 'S what I heard. So maybe it's more correct to say 'he left' rather than 'he was kicked out', but – technicalities, right? _Anyway_ --"

"That's – great," Leon said. Mostly because he couldn't think of anything better to say. He considered asking why _Axel_ didn't take up Sora then, if he had a walking and talking cheat sheet for _Politics of the Strife Family 101, _but decided he didn't want to know.

"So, to summarize --"

Leon could visualize him lean back against the counter right now and craning his neck like a turtle.

" – You're stuck with a strange teenage kid who got kicked out of his home and is the younger brother of the very guy you've been pining after since he first tight-pants-supermodel-glasses-sexy-sexy-motoroil-smell strutted into very college and signed up for your life drawing class."

Leon didn't need to turn around to know he was enjoying this immensely.

"Co-_oh_-rrect?" Axel sang in the hymn of Thanatos.

Question: if Leon ever managed to perfect his Death Glare, would he be charged with murder, and if yes, before or after he managed to pack his bags and flee to Cambodia?

Since Leon was still in the process of smoothing out the kinks in his stealth weapon, "_Something like that, Axel_."

"Leon, Leon, Leon." If Axel's voice had a color right now, it would be pulsing red with exuberance. "You're _fucked_, you know that? F-U-C-K-E-D. Got it --"

"Shouldn't _you_ be memorizing what time you have to go to class to?" Leon snapped, then stepped out of the doorway he'd been standing in for the past few minutes, and flung the door shut behind him with a rattle that -- chilled to the bone.

Or so Leon hoped.

* * *

When Leon pulled into the drive way that evening, he was relieved to see that a) his house was still standing, and that b) there weren't any new boy-sized FedExes waiting in the dripping rain outside of his door today. So far so good.

He pulled through the veil of rain that was still drooling from the gray block of sky, shrugged out of the car, and sprinted through the rain to the door. The warmth of the house greeted him like the breath of a beast, and he sighed in small contentment as he stashed away his car keys and slipped out of his leather boots.

To Leon, his home was truly his castle. Even if, much like Mario, he always seemed to be greeted by that pop-up that his princess was in another.

He found Sora quickly (he only had to follow the trail of lights blazing out of the light bulbs, really), and when Leon spilled into his living room, a pair of piercing blue eyes frolicked toward him from above the kitchen table, warm and welcoming and attached to a boy slumping over said table with half an apple held in his hand and the other half bulging his cheeks.

"Welcome home," he greeted through his food, actually _waving_ with one hand, as if that spot of brunette and sun-kissed limbs and sparkling cocktail blue eyes was somehow hard to miss amidst the glaring white of Leon's kitchen.

Or somehow hard to miss, period.

Leon averted his eyes and stalked over to the coffee machine, still feeling the boy's eyes on the side of his face. "You're still here." It wasn't a question.

Silence. _Munch. Munch. Swallow._ "_Yeaaah_. I was thinking of – this being a bit more than a one night type of deal?"

Leon gave him a _look_.

Sora nearly choked on his apple. "I don't mean --"

"Whatever," Leon bit, shuffling for his newspaper and ignoring the urge to rub his temples. "I may be an asshole, but not asshole enough to kick you out in the rain." A pause, followed by the rustling of the newspaper. "For now."

"So," Sora said, obviously angling to climb down the conversational ladder to less hostile altitudes, "Cloud said you're an artist."

Leon looked up from his newspaper, face suitably uninterested.

Sora was still sitting on the bar stool by the counter, munching on an apple held up by a propped-up hand above casually fanned-out legs beneath the table.

There was something – almost cute about watching the boy eat, Leon thought. Stuffed cheeks bulging against post-shower damp hair, jaw munching busily. Like a --

"So," the boy said, cheeks deflating when he swallowed. "Are you? An artist, I mean."

Leon swallowed, then gave an inward groan, shredding the mental images and shooing them back into the corners of his mind. Stupid, to reminiscence about -- well, whatever now. He sent Sora a look over his newspaper. "Something like that."

The boy's eyes lit up, pieces of apple raining out of his mouth when he said, "Oh yeah? That's _awesome_."

Leon eyed the piece of apple on the counter.

"I kind of always wanted to be an artist, too, you know? Soooo -- were you in the same class as Cloud? Did you --"

Bubbles of spittle. There were. Bubbles of spittle that. That gleamed beneath the morning sun falling in through the windows and. And _slithered_ around the pieces of apple strewn across the table. And.

"-- meet him in class? Oh, right." He leaned forward a bit on his stool, legs kicking beneath the table. "Cloud said you met in class when you were in college. That's cool. I want to go to --"

Spittle. On his. His table. _Spittle_.

"-- the same college. After I graduate I mean. Uh. I mean, obviously."

Leon's eyebrows _twitched_.

"Uh. Leon? Is something --"

"Hasn't it occurred to you," Leon said, voice strained as if trying to choke him, "that you're supposed to clean up after _spitting on someone's kitchen counter_?"

Sora's face fell. "Huh?" He looked down, catching the spit sparkling like merry diamonds beneath the light, no doubt. "Oh. _Oh_." He blinked. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'll just --" he put the apple down, shrugged, fisted the sleeve of his hoodie, and –

"Not with your _sleeve_," Leon snapped. "There's tissues right next to you. _Several_."

"Oh. Oh, of course. S-sorry about that." Sora leaned over, snatching a few tissues out of the box. "Sorry," he said, while rubbing at the wet spot, _smearing_ the spit all over the counter –

All right, at this point, the gleaming wetness was just _mocking_ Leon. Seriously.

To his benefit, he tried to be angry, he really did – but that was before he caught that apologetic, embarrassed smile on Sora's face – the one with the sloped eyebrows and the grin that showed the white wink of his teeth, skinny teenage shoulders drawn up toward his ears – and somehow, the rant he'd carefully written in gleaming (_urgh_) gothic font in the scroll of his mind evaporated with an empathetic _poof_.

The chair screeched along the floor. Leon rounded the kitchen table and went over to the counter, wrinkled his nose – and then started to pluck the tissues out of box one after the other before cleaning the mess with the eyes and the shoulder slope of the utterly defeated.

Sora twitched. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever."

"No, really. As a guest of the house, I should observe the rules." He hung his head low, and it looked like along with his entire posture, even his _spikes_ were dropping. "I'm sorry."

There was a twitch in the space between Leon's eyebrows, like a hammer pounding a nail right into the spot that sent his nerves into seizures all around it.

_You're fucked_, he remembered the gloating face of Axel's. _F-U-C-K --_

"By the way, I'd just appreciate it," Leon said while tossing the tissues away and reaching for another, voice strained, "if you _didn't_ make this whole debacle known to everyone at Twilight Town."

Sora twirled the apple core in his hands, eyes squinted, trying to find the last few bits of edible fruit. "Huh? What do you mean?" He took a crunch, mandibles busily working around the apple, bits of fruit juice glistening at the corners of his lips.

They looked kind of nice set against the evening sun filtering through the blinds.

Again, that _twitch_ between between Leon's eyebrows. "What I mean," he said, throwing away yet another crumpled piece of tissue with a practiced aim at the trash can, "is that _your_ brother told _my_ co-worker you're staying with me."

And then, it happened. Or almost.

Sora's mouth dropped open.

Leon could see, in a pink-and-red slide show of doom, how the pieces of apple fell victim to gravity and tumbled down, down toward the shiny surface of his kitchen counter which they would rain on to sully and ravage like black rain a fertile land, or some slightly less dramatic metaphor, and then –

Sora snapped his mouth shut at the last moment –

Safe!

- only to then boom an empathetic, "_WHAT_?" which, less-empathetically, caused the squishy, gooey, _entire_ content of his mouth to catapult out of his mouth and splatter itself _all over Leon's face_.

And time coalesced around them. Sora sat there, pure SHOCK sprawled in impressive, gothic font letters all over his face. And Leon froze in mid-movement, feeling the half-eaten bits of apple slither down along his cheek and drool off his jaw, and Leon was aware of everything, the heat of the sunshine through the window, the slow hissing sound of the coffee machine, the tick and whirr of his blood pumping through his veins, faster, _faster_ --

A piece of apple dropped down from Leon's jaw. He peeled open one eye, and then the other, to look at the boy sitting on the other end of the table.

_Huge eyes_, Leon thought. Huge eyes were staring at him, lips slightly parted in shock, and then Leon's gaze seemed to finally snap him back to his senses and he jumped in his seat as if a blitzkrieg of electrical current had sizzled through him, and he nearly _jumped_ on the table when he reached for the tissue box, plucked a tissue, two, then –

Leon caught his wrist in mid-movement. Felt it still against his grip. Bored his eyes into those giant pools of blue and said, "You're out by the morning. You hear me?"

With that, he let go off the boy's wrist, jerked himself up from the seat, and tried very hard _not_ to sprint toward the bathroom squeaking and screaming like a gay high school boy waking up with words 'SLUT' written over his face in neon pink magic marker on the first day of school camp.

He tried, and succeeded only because he was still clinging to his last shreds of dignity. Perhaps he'd never learn.

* * *

Thirty minutes of showering and scrubbing at his skin until he bore striking resemblance to Sebastian, the crab-red music teacher that Leon had once shared a room with on a teacher's excursions (_shudder_) later, Leon sauntered back into the living room, tugging at the towel wrapped around his neck.

There was no Sora in the room, not in the kitchen area, and not in the living room it was adjoined to. There was no trace of him either, save for his red storm jacket hanging off the back of the kitchen chair like a flag of surrender.

Ironically, Leon didn't really know how to feel about any of this anymore, so he decided to do what most men did when they couldn't figure something out: drink a beer.

And then, when he went over to the fridge, ready to yank open the door, that was when he saw it: the note stuck to the fridge on which it read, in childish blockletters:

_LEON,_

_I'M SO SORRY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED._

_PLEASE DON'T KICK ME OUT OKAY?_

_IT WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN. I PROMISE. 1000 PERCENT FOR SURE MY MANLY PRIDE PROMISE!_

There was a 'pormise' that Sora had scratched out, as well as a few messy scratches over a misspelling of the word 'manly'. Dog-eared and ratty, there was even a stain of questionable origin blooming like piss on the top left corner.

Leon was just about to rip off the note, crumble it and to hell with this insolent, bratty, rude, _useless_ little kid when he noticed that he had attached the note to the fridge with a _hamster_ pin.

A cute, brown, smiling cartoon hamster with its beady little black eyes shining and its rosy paws raised.

Leon blinked at it.

The pin blinked back, and Leon thought, '_Johnny, oh shit, he reminds me of Johnny_', and then, of course, Leon's hand dropped to catch his face in a groan of frustration, he proceeded to scratch at his skull, tug at his hair, and otherwise proceed to act like a madman before he remembered the last bits of vanity he possessed and he decided that if he had to be a madman, he'd rather be a madman with a beer than one with no hair, and thus found himself slumped against the couch with his legs fanned out, a beer in his hand and a haunted look on his face minutes later.

It started as an itch in his throat, really. An itch that swelled in his throat and made his stomach extend and then jerk inward, until it finally tumbled into his mouth and then out of it in one long, drawn-out chuckle, and then another, and then another.

Because even Leon knew that sometimes, when life just made no sense anymore, when everything was just so crazy it seemed like a group of the Goddess equivalents of hickey soccer moms somewhere in the Universe had decided to make you their reality TV show, you just had to _laugh_.

And so he did, until his stomach hurt and he had drowned more cans of beers than he remembered drinking in a long time. Not since last year's New Year, when Aerith and Yuffie had dressed him in girls' clothes and named him Lea and Axel had said he liked the name so much he wished he had it, and the more he drank, the more absurd it all seemed.

And somewhere in the hall way, while Leon chuckled to himself a boy stood huddled in the corner and took a deep breath of relief.

* * *

In Midgar, there's this saying: in ten years, even a mountain changes.

Sora was sure that some things never did, though. Such as ---

_Ring. Ring. Click. _"What?"

Roxas never answering the phone with his name for example.

"Why did you tell him, you dick?"

Or Sora getting straight to the point, either (the fact that he didn't sound very threatening when cursing notwithstanding).

Static blitzkrieg spat into the receiver on the other line of the connection.

Sora wriggled a little, feeling the bed on which he was currently lounging on rolling beneath him (stupid water bed). "Yo, say something." Sora propped himself up on his elbows. "You weren't supposed to tell him about this. How could you just --"

"Look," Roxas said, and Sora could practically _hear_ the frown in his face, "Axel won't tell anyone else, so just chillax, man."

"He told _Leon, _dickhead_. And I almost got kicked out._"

"Because of Axel telling him about – him knowing you were staying at his place...?" Roxas groaned. "All right, just spill."

Sora paused. Blew up into his bangs again. "Well, there was some... incident involving some pieces of –very delicious and red – app – Wait. Wait, what am I doing? I'm mad at you here." He re-schooled his face into a suitably angry expression, sturm and drang, hooza, here comes the knight. "What if Axel rats this out all over town? Your boyfriend has a looser mouth than the nutcracker, and _don't you tell me he doesn't_." _There_, he'd sounded suitably scary this time. Sora couldn't help but smile in pride, which sort of ruined the effect.

Static. _Buzz. Buzz_. "He's not my boyfriend." Roxas somehow still managed to sound like a brat even hundreds of miles away.

"Beside the point."

The sigh of the tortured on the other end of the line. "I didn't even tell Axel about _that_. He can't rat because he doesn't know." A pause, then a low, snide comment, "Happy now?"

Sora paused. "Serious? You told him that –?"

"Yeah, I backed up your story." Sora could just _visualize_ him roll his eyes. "Thank me later." A pause. "I kind of did tell him you had gotten kicked out, though."

At that, Sora jumped to his feet, shoving his index finger at a non-existent enemy, "Oh, screw you, you – uh," he flailed his arms before re-gaining his balance on the water bed. "Okay." He took an experimental step on the bed. "Okay, so." He cleared his throat. "HOW COULD YOU TELL HIM I WAS KICKED OUT YOU TRAITOR --"

"I didn't tell him _why_, okay? I didn't." Quieter, "He doesn't know you got kicked out because of him. Or them. Or _that_ thing, heck, I don't even know."

"Roxas," Sora warned darkly. "I swear to you, if mom _ever_ allows me back in the house, I'll fertilize the lawn with your bones until they grow into cherry trees."

"You already used that one before," Roxas said. Sora could hear him munching on chips now. "Remember? Back when we were thirteen and I ruined your reputation by taping a sign saying 'I watch _Sailor Moon_ every day' onto your back?"

"Roxas." When Sora was really angry, he always said his name like that. It sounded like _Rokzaz_.

Roxas sighed, and Sora could hear him transfer the phone from one ear to the other, probably to open a can of coke. "Listen, Axel won't tell anyone else, all right? Just trust me for once in your life." The pop of the can opening, then the sizzling sound of the foam raising before smoothing into a disc. "Not healthy to be so suspicious."

Sora frowned. "The last time you pulled _that_ line, you let your Star Wars action figures film Kairi's Barbie under the shower, and then claimed _I_ had done it when mom walked in on us."

The sigh from the other end of the line was positively nostalgic. "Oh yeah, that one was awesome, right?"

Getting Sora, whose face seemed like a perpetual orbit of light, to frown, took quite a bit of irritation. He could now feel the beginning of it settling as tension between his eyebrows.

_Some things never changed. Be it bullying older brothers or **worse** older brother or --_

"_Look_," Roxas said, effectively arresting Sora's attention with the urgency in his voice, the playfulness finally gone. "He _won't_ find out. I swear. Just – just trust me, okay?"

And Sora knew that was a much of an apology as he was ever going to get from Roxas, so he just said his quick thanks, hung up, listened to the montonous drill of the _peep peep peep _for a while before flipping his cell phone shut and flinging it against one of the pillows.

He didn't have much choice but to trust in Roxas, and hope for the best.

The odds didn't seem too promising.

* * *

**Author's Notes**: Ohhh, Sora, are you hiding something? WHAT? WHAT are you hiding???

Oh, we should shut up and wait for the next chapter? 'Kay...

^_^

So, a lot of fandom friends I have are kind of confused with my love for Leon/Sora. They don't really get it, and often ask me, "why? Why do you like this crack pairing? It makes no sense to me."

Well, this fic tries to explain the why. _This _is why I like Leon/Sora: because I like what _could _be more than what is. Because I always thought they made a gorgeous couple, with Leon such an introverted loner and Sora such a _burst _of light and energy, and goddamn, I just _like _it.

Just don't tell Riku, hehe. (I do like Riku/Sora, too, psst).

(Btw, if you were confused at Leon's characterization: I base him more on how he was in FFVIII, plus some of my own fanon, because I think it makes him more interesting, personally. I like Leon when he's a bit of a socially awkward dork in spite of all the cool-sexy-sexy-leather-sexy because, well -- it's more interesting?)

Soooo...

It's going to be a multi-chapter, I have the fic all planned out, but I don't know how long it'll be exactly.

'Till next time!

(btw, reviews make author enthusiastic in pants!)


	2. In Which Leon Gets Owned

**+ Johnny, My Dead Hamster +  
**

**+ Chapter 2/? +**

**In Which Leon's get owned  
**

* * *

Contrary to what Axel had predicted, Leon didn't think he was fucked. Not really.

The thought first occurred to on the morning that marked the 2nd day of... the Brat Boarding At His House For Free (he was going to have to come up with some initials for that, since he was already spelling it with caps in his mind. He was leaning toward BS - for _Brat Surprise_, though that could get a little awkward if he ever said those initials out loud. He'd also considered BPD - for Boy Pizza Delivery, but had disregarded this on account of how _kinky _it sounded, and no, he hadn't been watching any pizza boy porn (lately) and no -).

_Anyway_. He didn't really think he was that fucked anymore, in a way.

He hadn't always thought that way.

In fact, he had woken up this morning in a bad mood, and decided he was no longer going to tolerate the boy sleeping in and getting up whenever while _he, _Leon_,_ went to work and subjected himself to the ridicule of Axel and company.

No, Leon had decided. Enough of that. As Leon had deducted during an exploration through the spheres of logic that winded through his brain like glass tubes through a laboratory, or some slightly less out-there simile, the boy had to at least adhere to _his_ sleeping schedule - for Leon's sleeping schedule, as the one of the owner of this place, was the rule of the house, after all. And so, having decided right then and there to wake him up and make him be _useful_, no matter what, be it sun or rain or –

The door had swung open.

Leon's knuckle had, rather anti-climatically, frozen in mid-swing.

"Whashup? It's early," Sora had mumbled, blinking at Leon like a dying owl.

And Leon had just – looked at him.

A mess of brown spikes, with a few strands bobbing around his temples or the nape of his neck. Oversized pinestriped pajama sleeves pooling around sun-tanned wrists. Body slumping against the door frame, fist rubbing one eye while the another, unfocused eye drooping in a way that Leon had a hard time describing as anything other than –

_No_.

"Whatever," he had said curtly. "Go back to bed." With that, he had turned around and had been gone, doing the best he could to ignore the heat of the irritation pulsing beneath his cheeks.

And _that_ was that was what had prompted the 'epiphany', that had been the first time that he, as of yet elusive reasons, had started to think that maybe , just maybe, _not_ telling the boy to toddle off to the next homeless shelter _hadn't_ been the worst decision of his life, after all. Or, at least, that the one time he had decided to actually point out to Rinoa that she had bought her skirt approximately two sizes too small had perhaps been a little worse by objective evaluations.

Oh yeah, _that_ time hadn't been a wise decision, in retrospect.

_Shudder_.

Leon squinted his eyes, stalked back into the kitchen to down his cup of black coffee in one go, made a face at the bitterness, and then sped off to work to, once again, teach a bunch of credit-starved imbeciles how to draw fruit baskets.

Until he remembered that it was, in fact, July 3rd, which meant it was –

Oh. _Fuck_.

* * *

Leon arrived at the teacher's meeting room slightly breathless from the jog, and flung the door open without constraint.

The other teachers inside the room jerked at the noise and shot him the evil eye before easing back into their own planetary orbits of nervous waiting. Leon let his eyes trail over the rows – wow, look at that, even _Cid_ had shown up for the occasion – and assessed that the only chair still empty was one in the back row.

He proceeded to awkwardly edge through a picket of book bags and umbrellas to reach the last empty seat. He blinked once he was in his seat. A cored-out shaft of sunlight hammered at his head through the window to his right, and on the left of him, there was -

"Yo, Leonhart. You're late. Lucky she ain't in yet." A pause, and Leon didn't even have to look over to know he had crossed his legs, was lounging his head on his palm and giving him that grin that flooded his face with his trademark cynical canniness that made you want to get away to somewhere he wasn't. "Boy keep you up all night?"

Axel wasn't the only reason he wish he was somewhere else. "Whatever," he muttered, darting a glance over to the clock hoisted on the wall.

To his left, Axel kept on doing what he did best. "Hey," he exclaimed, dropping his hand onto the table. "I have something to give ya later. Something you'll _really_ like, or – rather, he'll like. It's great."

"Okay," Leon said. He started to tap his foot, twirling his pen in his fingers, slicing his eyes to the clock and back, _and when was she coming, and he still didn't have an idea for a painting, oh godohfuck -_

"It's a _Wii_," Axel said, in much the same way Cid liked to proclaim, '_Boobs_'.

Leon had no idea what a 'Wii' was supposed to be, but trusted Axel enough not to ambush him with the first thing that came to his mind at the mention. Besides, it's not like Axel could ever part with _that_. "That's nice."

"Yeah, I'll give it to you later. I tell you, Roxas was _not_ happy when I said I'd give it to you, but consider it an act of my generosity. So, when this – what is this thing today about -"

"September's art auction." Another glance at the clock, over the bustling people gathered in the room, the steady _tick tock_ of the clock and the _tap tap tap tap_ of his foot and then -

When the door _crashed_ against the wall and Ursula stalked into the room, the physical shock that made Leon sit upright and was nothing so much as being slapped all over the face.

One hand pressing books flat against her chest and the other cradling a little red chihuahua who looked about as happy to be near the crushing presence of the department head's sagging bosom as any sane male below the age of seventy would, the department head came to a halt in front of them, eyes narrowing at them in a way that spelled DOOM in capital letters.

If Leon had been a turtle, he would have drawn in his head. Since he wasn't, he only stared in barely-concealed horror.

"So," Ursula sang in a way that bared her canines and made her face look like a cauldron of tics and wrinkles, "I trust that most of you have started your preparations by now."

Next to him, Axel mouthed, 'WHAT?'

Leon wanted to groan.

Ursula tossed the books on the table and then swirled back around to face them, the chihuahua in her arm holding on for dear life. Leon remembered that the poor animal's name was Ariel. For some reason, the department head liked to carry the handbag-sized dog around with her wherever she went – Leon sent a quick prayer to whatever canine deity was in vicinity.

After a few moments of that, Leon abandoned his prayer on account of it being both useless and potentially distracting. Also, he was kind of too horrified to pay much attention.

Ursula waltzed over to the black ground – _waltzing_ being the appropriate word here, considering the woman also walked with wide steps, as if she was the she-officer leading an imaginary military drill – then grabbed piece of chalk and began to write in big, screechy letters.

'ART EXHIBITION – SEPTEMBER 1st'

"The fuck?" That was Axel next to him, staring in awe. Or possibly like someone had amputated half his brain. Leon just hoped it was the half that had memorized the goddamn soap opera lyrics.

"Well," Ursula announced, twirling around on her feet like a retired ballerina. "You are all aware of the art exhibition, right, my _lovelies_?" Her voice was high and sinister, and the very sound of it had been permanently etched into everybody's DNA as an immediate trigger for alertness, head-ducking and impromptu-praying.

Or in Axel's case, impromptu-bedwetting. "The fuck, Leon? What's she talking about?"

Leon groaned, elbowing him hard into the ribs. "Shut up and listen."

Ursula sauntered over to the teacher's desk.

The entire room _jerked_ when she slapped both of her arms onto the desk without warning, booming, "I trust you all remember we are displaying all our teacher's art on September the first, and that you are all expected to contribute." Her features fell dramatically and her tone right alone with it, giving the room a smarmy smile. "Right, my lovelies?"

Leon shuddered. So did everyone else in the room. Including Ariel.

Ursula dropped her sickly-sweet fake smile, banged her fist against the desk, and shrieked, "_One painting from each of you, you hear me_?"

Sometimes you could thank Axel for verbalizing everyone's thoughts. "Oh, shit," he said.

Ursula threw back her head, giving one high-pitched _shriek_ of a laugh (that made half the population in the room back as far back as their chairs would allow), and then, a softer, "Or you're all so fucking fired like you're in the Satan's cauldron himself." A smile, and then she leaned forward, throwing her way this way and that, eyes huge and fake lashes fluttering. "Understood?"

"Yes, department head," came the uniform reply.

Ursula deflated some of her breath. "Good. Good, good." She stepped down from the podium, smoothing down her long black dress, and said, "Well, I have an appointment at the beautician today." And left.

And as soon as the door fell shut behind her, an audible sigh of relief fissured from person to person, from row to row.

Axel, for his part, looked nothing as much as flabbergasted. He turned to Leon, face scandalized. "Can she _do_ that?"

Oh, the exuberant innocence of noobies and the _joys_ of easing them into the art department. "She can do whatever she wants," Leon muttered, collecting his books and pens. "She married the director of the school."

"She's _married_?" Axel exclaimed, as if Leon had just told him he fancied getting naked and doing the _Luma Luma_ dance in the retirement home's gardens. "Someone – okay, let me get this straight. Someone actually _married_ her?"

Leon shrugged. "Different folks, different – you know the drill."

"Wow." Axel exhaled. "That's more fucked-up than any amnesia, incest, forbidden love and hidden child soap opera story ever invented. _Put together_."

Leon sighed. "You're being melodramatic." He watched the other teachers in the room get up and falling into chatter, but for some reason, Leon was still too dazed to get up himself.

"So have you decided on your painting yet?" Axel asked, making no motion to get up himself, folding his hands over the back rest of his chair.

Leon thought about this. He'd thought he had it, once – he'd had a vision, or something, or been blessed with the spring of inspiration bubbling to the surface, more likely – of a painting he'd wanted to complete.

It had just been at his fingertips, the way a word that's slipped your mind feels like it's resting on your tongue, just _this _reluctant of tumbling out when you're fumbling for it. It had felt like that, and he'd wanted to paint it, had been _itching_ to do it, but –

Leon shook his head and got up, smoothing down his leather jacket and shrugging his bag over his shoulder. "No, I have absolutely no clue."

"Well." Axel shrugged, then scratched the back of his neck with one hand while cocking his face to the size, smile of feline canniness on his face. "It's only early July. September 1st's a loooong way off yet." He uncrossed his legs and leapt to his feet, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn before letting them fall back to his sides. "So, wanna grab a bite?"

Leon looked at him just the teeniest bit sourly at the suggestion. "Can't."

"Ahh yeeeeah," Axel drawled, eyes rotating in quick thought. "The kiddo. He tough on you yet?"

_Tough_? Leon thought.

He thought of the boy then; images of his smiling face snapping in front of his inner cornea like black-white photos in an outdated camera, with the _click_ that changed pictures.

Then he thought of him with his cheeks stuffed full of apple, spitting it all over his table (his table! His. _Table_!) and he said, "Something like that." A pause. "Well, then."

He had just been about to leave when Axel called after him.

"Yo, Leon. Not gonna take the _Wii_?"

* * *

Coming home followed the usual routine: drive car home. Park car. Get out of car. Fish for keys. Open door. Call to Sora he was home, and – wait, what?

He shook his head to himself as he rounded his car after parking it in the sweeping driveway and approached his house, _Nintando_ (he thought that's what Axel had said, anyway) _Wii _clamped under his arm, distantly wondering why in the world he was bringing the random boy from the doorstep a fucking game console.

Wasn't that sort of like – bringing the rats in your attic slabs of piquant Camembert cheese?

He actually had to stop and think about that for a second. Until a bolt of headache zigzagged through his skull, and he thought, _dammit_, and hadn't he had enough trouble today, seriously, first the whole art exhibition thing and now this _Woo-_whatever console, and – and (Cloud, _shit, Cloud_) and – everything.

But even while his heart rate exhilarated at the stress, his mood being dragged down as if the anxiety were a physical stone-bolstered blanket of doom, through all of this, Leon remained calm on the outside.

Arieth had once said that if one wanted to know how Leon truly felt, you didn't look for a narrowing of eyes, or a moody downturn of a lip, or even the interplay of emotion on the entirety of his face. No, she'd said, one had to watch his hands because they were the ones that twitched when he was anxious.

Leon didn't really need to look down to know his own were about as active as a field mouse running head-first into that electrical fence at _Jurassic Park_ right now.

The door fell closed behind him (_not_ calling out to Sora, mind), and Leon (hands still twitching, one wrapped around the... _Nintanda _or whatever) listened.

Only there was silence. Stranger still, the lights were all turned off already. Not a sound hushed down the corridors of Leon's house.

_Huh_.

Where _was_ that little space cadet now?

He checked the kitchen first; he saw nothing but swelling evening light dappling on the tiles, and the blinking light of the coffee machine he had apparently forgotten to switch off in the morning. Sora's room was next, but upon opening the door, all he was greeted with was empty, echoing, horribly twining silence. He closed the door again, pacing the hallway, coming to a halt with an old, dusty storage room to his left and the room leading to the master bedroom on the right.

And so, Leon did what Leon did best.

He brooded: arms crossed over his chest, face thrown into a scathing frown, eyelids lowered, the whole shebang.

It was possible he had left, he supposed, weighing the idea in his head. _Had _he left? Could he dare to hope that had the first problem on his ever-growing list of pains been removed, and were things actually looking up for once?

He allowed himself to entertain this thought for about a moment before the storage closet to his left opened and Sora walked out of it.

Yes, and _that_, my friends, was how Sora came out of the closet.

….Now that was one sentence Leon hadn't envisioned himself to be thinking any time soon. Or ever.

"Uh, Leon? Hi," the boy said, rubbing the back of his head, peering at him from under lidded eyes framed by puffy swellings. He yawned slightly. "Sorry – I fell asleep."

A beat.

Leon blinked. "In the closet," he said. Just to confirm.

Sora rubbed his eyes, one eyelid practically _drooping. "_Yeaaaah – sorta."

Leon looked the boy up and down. "It may be pointless to ask, but." Why did Leon get the feeling he was missing something here? Like, something _huge_? "_Why_ are you sleeping in the closet?"

"Hm?" Sora replied, sleep drizzling his voice, blinking at Leon as if he had trouble understanding, the blue sunshine of his eyes hidden behind clouds. Then, he shook his head a little, and said, "Oh, I was – bored, so I went looking for something to do. I found some books. Just romance novels. But I read 'em and then fell asleep."

Somehow, Leon's mind skipped over everything else the boy had said to pounce on the words _'romance novel_.' "They're not mine. They're Aerith's."

Sora shrugged. "Yeah?"

There might have been a wail and cry inside of him as another part of manliness withered up and died. Or, alternatively, a _KABOOM_ as same wheeled off its course and went up in a smash of broken wheels and fireworks against the nearest wall.

Outwardly, he only raised an eyebrow at Sora.

Who just shrugged, then smiled. "Anyway. Whoever's books they are, they were a bit boring." He paused, smile broadening, turning ever more winning. "And, you're back. Hi." Then he raised his head to look at him with an expression that reminded Leon of nothing as much as squirrel angling for a dangling nut. "Dinner?"

"Take-out," Leon said. Eyed Sora a bit longer. Then, with the sigh of the utterly defeated, "I got something for you. There's a _Nintando Wee_ on the table in the living room, and -"

Sora's cheer effectively cut off both Leon's voice and most of this thoughts; the boy clapped, gave Leon a quick hug (warm, lingering), then sped into the kitchen all in quick succession.

After a second (or two, or – okay, maybe, _possibly_ three) seconds of having stood there dazed like a lovestruck teenage girl stumbling upon Robert Pattinson in the check-out line of the local supermarket, Leon shook his head, and decided on the priority in his life right now:

One, two, or possibly a _million_ cans of beer.

* * *

He didn't quite make it to a million cans that night.

He did, however, decide that Leon looked a lot like Cloud some hazy and entirely undetermined time between beer cans #4 and #5. Leon got just the tiniest bit sentimental when he was a bit drunk, see.

Most of the time, with his bulging cheeks and sparkly eyes, Sora reminded Leon of a hamster.

But sometimes, well, _sometimes_, Leon decided while resting his eyes on the kid with that ridiculous controller in his hands and his eyes glued to the TV screen in Leon's living room – well, _sometimes_, Sora also looked a lot like Cloud.

Because _sometimes_, it was just _there, _in a variety of different ways: in the way Sora's lower lip quivered when anger welled up inside him (often in conjunction to that dreaded _Game Over_ screen filling the screen); or in the way he would start blinking right along with his heart beat when he was getting nervous.

Sometimes, thought, he'd just plain _look_ like Cloud. Sometimes, with the sunlight glimmering off long, mahogany lashes. Sometimes he'd just –

"Um. Leon...?"

The nostalgic recollections that had drifted through his mind like gauze scattered, shredded pieces speeding back into the coffins set up in the corners of his mind.

Leon blinked.

A brown flash appeared from below the edge of his vision as Sora propped himself up on his hands, controller in his lap, game paused.

Leon shook his head. "Nothing."

"I haven't thanked you properly yet. For the Wii, I mean. It's totally cool. Like, _awesome_." He smiled, and stuck out his tongue a little at a memory. "Ugh, and a lot more interesting than those novels with the gentlemen with the flowing hair. Seriously."

Leon shrugged. "Thank Axel."

Sora nodded his head to the side, spikes bobbing. "But I'd rather thank you." Then, he yawned. "I guess I'm taking a short gaming break."

He fell back flat on his back, oversized hoodie spread out beneath him like a dark corona. He threaded his hands behind his neck and closed his eyes.

Leon surveyed the scene for a moment. There they were, in his living room, with Leon sitting on the couch drinking beer while this kid was lounging on his carpeted floor with a game controller balancing on his belly. The electric light from the TV illuminated his skin and threw shadows where it couldn't touch.

Leon rubbed his eyes. "Sora."

The uncontainable flash of the boy's eyes leaped over the room at Leon. "Hmm?"

Leon licked his lips and cleared his throat. Then, "Why did you get kicked out of your house?"

Sora held his eyes, and everything else – the ticking of the toll tower, the _tick-tack _of the clock hoisted on the wall, the noises from the video game – fell away, silence stretching long and thin between them.

Sora drew his face to the side, canines digging into his lower lip. "Some stuff happened." He started to fiddle on the floor, one leg starting to trail up the other, toes scratching his ankles in a nervous habit. "My parents and I fought. They didn't understand me, or – well. Maybe the timing wasn't right or – hell, _I don't know_. Um, I mean – _heck, _I don't know. Yeah."

Leon thought that he was twisting so much that, if he had been huddled in a blanket down there, he'd probably be as entangled as a masochist in a good old bondage session right about now.

"And then," the boy continued, "I said – some pretty bad stuff I – probably shouldn't have."

Leon nodded, and then said in his best child-psychologist voice, "I understand."

"I – I just wanted some time away from them, and – yanno. Stuff." _Fiddle, fiddle._ "I'll go back soon."

And Leon was pretty sure that what he said next was just the beer talking.

"Yeah. That's – that's all right." A beat. "I mean, I don't mind so much. That you're here."

The beer was eloquent indeed.

Sora rewarded him with a smile that opened up his face. "Thanks. Because that totally _did_ mean that I could stay here for a while, didn't it?"

Leon blinked. "Hey, hey? What? I did _not_ say you could stay here for very long or anything. I expect you out by – the end of summer at the latest, you hear me?"

That smile didn't waver; bright and honest and _by God_, it was infectious. "Of _course_."

"I mean it," Leon said. "You make my house a mess. I'm only keeping you as long as keep it clean. And I _mean_ 'clean'. Like, 'could eat off the floor' kind of clean."

Sora nodded, spikes bobbing atop his head and fluttering against his cheek bones. "Duly noted, sir."

"And you don't spit apple all over my kitchen counter. Ever. _Again_."

Sora's smile was so wide now it looked like he was trying to eat both of his ears at once. "Of course not. Who do you take me for?"

"Also," Leon said, "you take off your shoes before you come in, you pat off your shirt – and _especially_ those oversized sneakers of yours, seriously kid, how do you walk in those boats –"

"Aye, aye," the boy called before slumping back, reaching for his controller.

"And when you take a shower," Leon said, mouth set on auto-pilot, "you make sure not to leave puddles behind on the tiles. Not like yesterday, when the entire floor was _flooded_."

Leon could _hear _the smile in the boy's voice, "Yessir."

Leon, finally realizing what he was doing, shut with mouth with an audible _click,_ averted his eyes and focused them on the bars of of sun light gleaming on the tiles like a film of liquid star dust.

Silence settled over them, jostled only by the occasional sound from the TV set.

Leon, meanwhile, was locked in a heated debate with his inner self regarding the his stupid soft spot for Cloud (him arguing it was the size of a tennis court, and his inner self insisting it spanned _at least_ an entire football field) when –

"Cloud was right," Sora said from the floor. "That you're a cool dude, I mean. He said you were. A cool dude. And you are."

_Cool __**what**__?_ His inner self echoed, gloating as much as imaginary voices in Leon's head were capable of. _There, I win. Football field, no doubt about it._

_**Including**_ _the goddamn stadium_, Leon thought back.

* * *

And so, scarily enough, after that horrendous day filled with witnessing Ursula's very public PMS attack and failing ruefully at bargaining with a teenaged brat, something like – something almost like routine settled into the house.

He went to work in the morning, with a sour mood and even sourer expression. Only that expression filled out and cracked over the course of the work day, until, by the end of it, when he arrived home, shrugged out of his car, and leapt to the front porch, his features had loosened. Relaxed.

There was someone there waiting for him when he came home, and they'd eat dinner and talk. Well - mostly Sora would talk and Leon would make very eloquent commentaries in the form of grumbles. Sora had taken it upon himself to become an English-Leon translator and had to date identified 15 different kinds of grumbles, but – no matter. They talked, and it was (kind of sort of) more fun than watching TV and drinking beer by himself had been before the kid had waltzed into his life.

Leon didn't really know what Sora did with his time. Leon imagined that time had to stretch out before the kid like endlessly unraveling thread. Sometimes, he wondered if someone like _him_ – someone so floating with energy he had to be on first-name basis with the goddamn _Mir _– wasn't bored out of his mind spending the days at Leon's house.

Sora never complained, and Leon never asked.

He considered a few times to snap at the kid if he didn't have any friends to hang out with instead of working on his apparently deep-burning desire to faciliate a deep joining of souls with his game console. He didn't in the end, considering how enormously condescending _that_ would have been.

He was just happy he didn't find any spit-covered fruit pieces splattered over his counter anymore, really. He could deal with the rest.

So he said nothing when the boy greeted him with a grand smile and a wave, and said nothing when he sank into the couch with a sigh more befitting on a middle-aged housewife whose dream of a picket fence and 2.5 kids had amounted to a cheating husband and bratty kids, and said nothing of importance when they ate dinner (take-out, invariably; Leon was a bad cook and if Leon had to wager, Sora was probably even _worse_) -

Said nothing still, even while he read a book accompanied by the background noise of _oh-hoo_ of Mario jumping and the _dum-dum-duum_ of him growing after obtaining a mushroom and the _ta-da-da_ of clearing a stage.

There wasn't really a need to say anything. And although the kid didn't cook or helped with the housework much (Leon had pretty much given up on that one after his failed attempt to wake up Sora at an appropriate time, and Sora's subsequent near-fatal encounter with the china tea cups set in his kitchen), it was –

Well. Domestic, almost.

It was only sometimes, just _sometimes_ that he caught Sora looking at him as if he was going to say something, mouth already opened and eyes flexed onto Leon –

But then his mouth snapped shut, he turned his face back until the shimmer of the screen tinted his face blue, and he didn't.

And so, the days passed by; one, then two, then three, then four. Days that, in many ways, were identical to the many other summer days Leon had spent in the city before.

He also worried about the exhibition – mostly when he was at work and listened to the his co-workers talk about in hushed conversations sprinkled with creative curse words aimed at the Frau Department Head. Even felt the anxiety demons gnaw away at his intestined some days – but mostly they fled and sped into the corners or wherever they lay in wait as soon as Leon packed his belongings and wrapped up for the day.

Because back at home, even though he had just picked up a stray teenage boy a mere couple of days ago – there was peace, and there was silence.

Well. Silence, _and_ the steady _oh-hoo, dum-dum-dum, ta-da-da_ intercepted by the occasional heartfelt "Fuck," that Leon was pretty sure he should chide the boy for but found himself oddly amused by.

* * *

There was something wrong with that boy's smile, Leon decided after about a week of having shared his house with the boy and being subjected to this very smile upon coming from work nearly every evening.

It was too bright, for one; so bright that it made Leon lean forward unconsciously as if being pulled in by the twining rays spiraling out of the sun setting on his face.

It was _wrong_ because it was one thing that was decidedly different from Cloud, for one thing. When _he_ smiled, there was always something holding him back; restraint clustering in a tightness around the corners of his lips, eyes like tropical water locked down beyond a frozen veneer. Nothing like the waves that seemed to spill out of the glittering depths of _Sora's_ eyes whenever that blinding smile peeled back his lips, certainly.

Another thing was not the smile itself, but what it made him feel, and that was one winding, creaking staircase Leon was not yet willing to shuffle down again. It was almost as bad as the way he wrinkles his nose or rubbed his eyes, or the way his cheeks bulged when he ate – it was too familiar, it was disturbingly lacking of any kind of brazenness, any nobs in the paper of his personality that would screech and scratch against his if rubbed together.

Just so disgustingly personable that Leon was pretty sure that if he ever took him out, random women would attempt to abduct him so they could keep him in a cage and feed him forever and ever.

"Can you smile a bit less – like _that_?" Leon asked on the one week anniversary PBP _(Pos__t Boy Package _– that's the shorthand Leon had decided upon during one particularly boring class).

Then it was Sora's turn to _blink_. "Like, uh. _What,_ exactly?"

And that, of course, was when Leon realized that he really, really should have kept his mouth shut, and that, "because your smile reminds me of my dead pet hamster and no, I'm really not insane" really wasn't something he could just say now, was it, and _fuck_ -

Well, too late now. "Like - like you're trying to devour both of your ears."

Another blink. "I smile like that?" Sora asked, hands slackening around the controller for once in time with his features.

Leon felt the sudden, irrational urge to stick his fingers into the the corners of the boy's lips and pull them back up.

He sighed, feeling the familiar pressure of an approaching migraine in his temples. "You know what? Never mind." He averted his eyes and shrugged out of his leather jacket, laying it over the back of the kitchen chair where it hung like a flag of surrender. "Never mind."

That's what it came down to, really.

_Nevermind. Nevermind._

"And don't come out of the closet again," he bit, almost as an afterthought.

* * *

It should be noted that, no matter what her bright and vibrant laughter, large doe-eyes and pink clothes were trying to fool you into believing, Aerith really wasn't as innocent as she looked.

In fact, as far as Leon was concerned, she was about as innocent as could be expected from a girl who had grown up in the slums. Which was to say, about as innocent as Cid in a school girl uniform: convincing from a distance, perhaps - well, okay, maybe a few _miles of_ distance - but the closer you got, the more the truth (and in Cid-in-a-school-uniform's case, the _horror_) revealed itself until you stood weeping in front of the shambles of the castle of pink-colored and _My Little Pony_-shaped illusions you'd built around that person.

Learning the truth about Aerith was sort of like that.

In Leon's case, the revelation had unraveled itself like a gas bomb-holding parcel one day a year or so ago, when he had been on the phone with Cloud and Aerith had bounced on the spot, squinted at Leon, giggled behind one finely-manicured hand - only to then form a ring with thumb and index finger of one hand and penetrated it with the finger of her other hand in the quintessential pantomimic act of copulation that had first been observed in the human animal in a kindergarten circa fifteenhundred B.C.

It was only a minor exaggeration to say that Leon had almost dropped the phone at the sight.

It was also the reason why he been very shocked when she had exclaimed, eyes glowing, "So, to summarize: Cloud has a brother, who's cute, and a teenager, _aaand_ - currently staying in your house."

"That's pretty much abridged version of '_Leon Leonhart and the Eloped Crush's Brat Brother_,' yes." Because yes, Aerith knew about his feeling for Cloud. He'd told her once, in a scene involving her soothing voice, an old tinny vinyl player screeching along the tones of '_Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so faaar away_'. And about half a bottle of absinthe. Can't forget the absinthe. It was a _good _scapegoat, okay?

Today, when he had run into her on the street after doing his grocery shopping (not much - beer, coffee beans, candy, toast), she had brushed a strand of wet hair out of her eyes and positively _cooed_, "Oh, as it so happens, nobody's buying flowers today anyway - well, shall we?" and _that_ was how Aerith had stepped into Leon's house that Saturday evening with Leon plodding inside after her like the whipped bitch he was.

And so there they had stood: Aerith bouncing on her heels, eager to meet _The Brother _(as she'd been referring him to) with Leon eying the puddle she'd left on the gleaming tiles.

And then Sora, ensnared by the mellifluous sound of Aerith calling his name, no doubt, had emerged from the living room, eyes wide and curious, and Aerith, smelling the prey, had hurled a flurry of pitch-black words painted over with pink nail polish at him and caught him up into a conversation filled with '_oohs_' and '_ahhs_' before Leon had even had the chance to get in a word in edgewise.

Not that it had mattered, really. Leon had been quite content to just sit and listen to them talk. Aerith had poured herself onto one of the kitchen chairs like water, and, well - Sora's smile had been so bright that Leon hadn't really wanted to contribute to the conversation anyway.

And then, of course, after Sora had politely excused himself (_oh yes, it was really nice to meet her, but could she understand, he had some turtle ass to kick_), and Leon had been left alone with Aerith in the kitchen, there had been that _glint_ in her eyes, the one that Leon had long since learned spelled TROUBLE in capital letters. And he had silently said his prayers.

And here goes.

"He's _cute_," Aerith judged, leaning forward on the table, eyes the vocal point of her face. "Very cute."

Leon gave a noncommital shrug, getting up to refill his cup of coffee. Because ugh, no more beer after last night. For at least two whole _days_. "I guess. Kids tend to be."

Aerith gave him that _look_, the 'tell me more' one that women were so damn good at when they were just about to spill over with excitement, and then something on her face changed, shifted, and she said, in that low, conspiratory tone, "Oh, don't tell me..." she trailed off, giving Leon another smile that decidedly balanced along the border to giddy-land.

Leon just gave her a look, too, though his was decidedly less '_tell me more_' and rather more, "What the fuck?"

"He's _Cloud's _brother, isn't he?" The smile she gave him was positively terrifying.

Leon rolled his eyes. "So it appears."

"I see," Aertih said, propping her head onto her palm and grinning. "His brother, huh? I mean." She started figeting on her chair, foot bumping against his leg. "Oh, Leon. It's so _cute_."

Leon just looked at her.

Aerith stopped fidgeting in mid-movement, then swallowed the giggles that had been ready to spill out of her. She leaned farther across the table, corkscrew locks bobbing over the gleaming white surface. "You don't get it, do you?" She grinned. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

Now, Aerith was, as previously established, not nearly as innocent as she looked.

But that didn't mean that Leon's EQ suddenly ceased to be hopelessly mired in single digits, and so he let the reference fall off the conversational cliff without a second thought. He stirred his coffee, looking at the black whorls, wondering for perhaps the hundredth time why exactly he had ever appointed the resident flower-girl-slash-closet-pervert as his best friend, and where he could get some more of _that _particular type of crack.

After a moment of holding her pose, Aerith sighed, slumping back against the back rest of her chair, giving Leon her best 'don't-worry-my-child-you-will-understand-eventually' look.

Leon took to it about as well as any other teenager had in the history of the most terrifying of all mom glares. "What?"

"Nothing," she singsonged lightly.

Leon's eyebrow twitched. "I mean, yeah. I mean - I let him stay here because he's Cloud's brother. I wouldn't let any other kid stay here. So it's relevant that he's _Cloud's brother_."

"Right," Aerith agreed, in the way you say that word to children or the mentally challenged.

"I'm only being a good friend hosting him."

"Certainly," she said with a tight smile.

Why did he always feel like she was _mocking_ him?

"_Anyway_," Leon said, voice clipped and tight, "you met him, you made your judgment. Any other business you have here?"

Aerith considered this for a moment, then shook her head. "No. Well. Then," she leaped to her feet, smoothing down her pink summer dress, "I'll be going then. I'll come back tomorrow evening."

_Yes. Yes, please go already. Go and - wait. **Wait**._

"Come back _tomorrow_?" Leon blurted.

Aerith's features narrowed in mild surprise. "You haven't been listening?"

Leon frowned.

She sighed, and the next thing he knew, she was crowding into him, hands windmilling into his face. "Oh, _honestly_. Can't you tell the kid is bored out of his fucking mind?"

Leon blinked. Once, twice, _thrice_. "He _is_?"

"_Leon_," Aerith exclaimed, dropping her hands. "You leave him all by himself in your big bland apartment all day long and you don't think that he'd maybe like to go out sometime?"

"He never said anything like that," he said in a voice that was rapidly approaching that of a petulant child. "And I did get him a Nintando Wii. Which is _not_ the thing it awfully sounds a lot like."

"I know what a Wii is," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Also, it's _Nintendo_."

There was a tightness behind his forehead, tugging and pulling. "Anyway. I got him that _Nintendo_. I buy him dinner. Watch him play that stupid game. And he never _says _he wants to go places."

"Of _course_ he wouldn't. He's too polite to want to burden you like that." She shook her head. "Honestly, _sometimes_..."

"If he wanted to go out, he could just go by himself."

"Well." Aerith's exasperated expression smoothed into one of worry. _"_Well_. That's_ the thing, really. I - I think there may be," she threw a look toward the living room, "a _reason_ for why he doesn't want to. Go out by himself, I mean." A beat. "And before you ask me what that reason is: _I don't know_. It's just - a feeling I have."

"Oh," Leon commented eloquently. "Oh. So, he'd - like to go out together with someone?"

"Yes," Aerith confirmed, "That's what I said. And which is why I said I'd show him around town tomorrow." She paused, eyes dancing over to the windows. "I should probably leave before it starts raining again."

Leon nodded, waving her away with a casual hand. Thoughts stumbled over another like a bunch of kids locked in a heated game of _Twister_, his mind switched over to auto-pilot, and before he knew it he'd already said, "I'll take him out tomorrow."

Aerith stopped dead in her tracks on her way to the door.

Leon blinked, realized what he'd done, and quickly raised his cup of coffee to his lips. "Don't bother, I mean. He's my responsibility after all. So - you don't need to come. Is what I mean."

He wasn't entirely sure, but he did think he had caught her snapping into a victory pose for just a _second_, before waving and bumbling down the hallway to the door.

When Leon, after a rigorous regime of rolling his eyes at the retreating figure of his beloved friend-slash-arch-enemy, returned back to the living room, ready to tell the boy about their 'appointment' tomorrow (in a trademark of Leonhart eloquency, he'd already mapped the proposal out in his mind – he'd mutter, "Sightseeing tomorrow" before retiring to his room _immediately), _when he found the boy sleeping.

Leon stopped in his tracks.

The TV and the lights both switched off, and only the bleary pumpkin light from the streetlights outside cast highlights on the boy-shaped lump huddled on the floor. It was illumination enough for Leon to see several things.

That the boy was sleeping in perhaps the most acrobatic position known to man; both legs spread apart like a Russian marionette with the string taught, one arm recklessly thrown over his eyes, spikes spread out in so many ways and directions that Leon was half-sure they were breaking at least one or two laws of physics (and looking annoyingly _adorable_ in the process, too –)

Most of all, though, Leon just thought that the boy better not drool on his floor. Because it would take quite a while to get it out if it soaked through. And also, _his_ floor?

Sora turned onto his back, the arm that had been strewn over his face slapping against the floor.

Leon kept looking.

The boy's profile was now a landscape of light and shadow, the streetlights glinting off the wetness on his lips that made them wink like flashes of diamonds.

And then said lips fell apart – just like that, without warning – and the boy drew in a massive gust of air, and Leon expected a snore to rattle through the boy's wind pipe any second now, until -

"Whyshyoonot," Sora mumbled, voice sleep-laden and boyish. "Yashoudnt... bad..."

Something in Leon's throat constricted at how ridiculously _cute_ he was. Because, seriously.

He poked the boy again, finger digging into his hip.

The boy jerked, then softened back into sleep. "Yoowhoot... sl'p..."

"Yes, sleep," Leon muttered. "In your bed."

It was only then that Leon realized something. Something that, under some circumstances, could have been quite meaningful.

He was smiling as he looked at the boy. Fully, rigidly smiling in a way he hadn't in ages. Smiling so hard his face hurt a bit, pulling at the edges.

Smiling in a way he couldn't allow, and with that thought, it died. Softened, liquidized, until it dropped and fermented into his usual mask of cool apathy. Until it stayed there, firm and rigid, and he took a deep breath.

"Sora," he tried again, hand slipping up to grab him by the shoulders. Louder, "Sora."

"Nng... ung?" One eye slid open, blue even in the diffusing rays of moon light. Unfocused and searching until it fell on Leon's face, and stayed there.

For a moment, they just looked at each other.

Everything else fell away and somewhere in his chest cavity, Leon's heart picked up pace.

"Sora," he tried again. It was a pretty name, really, the stress equal on both syllables – not sore-ah, but _So-ra_. So. Ra. "Get to bed." A pause. "The floor is only mildly better than the closet."

The boy jostled awake, and sat up, supported by his hands.

Leon withdrew his face, wanting to get away from the warmth.

"Uh, sorry," the boy said, blinking the sleep away. "I fell asleep? Damn." Then he yawned, large and open-mouthed, subjecting Leon to an involuntary dental examination, and Leon made a face, and withdrew, and got to his feet, and the moment, for all it was worth (and _whatever_ it had been) was broken.

He stood and watched the boy scramble to his feet. Watched Sora scratch the back of his head, then run a hand through his wild spikes. Watched his gaze linger around the room as if still trying to put together what had happened – or more likely, trying to remember the adventurous route to his bedroom.

Then Leon said, "Don't make any plans for tomorrow."

Sora looked at him then.

"I'm showing you the town tomorrow. It's Sunday."

And then he turned away, because he didn't particularly want to see the smile setting on his face, didn't want to see the wonder settling in his eyes, didn't really want to see anything but the pale white of his walls (there, better) and he grumbled, "Sight-seeing or something, okay?"

The boy cheered, and Leon was glad he was standing with his back to him. The boy sounded so excited that he might have hugged him in joyous exuberance.

And _that_ was a line that Leon didn't want to cross again.

"Up by eight," he grumbled. "Not a second too late. You hear me?"

* * *

**Author's Notes**: It's been forever and two centuries since I updated, I know. At some point, even I thought I wouldn't continue it. You can thank my bff SavvyLovesYaoi for pestering me and convincing me that I should. XD

So um yeah. Here it is now. A bit longer than the first, even. I actually really love this story, and the pairing is very dear to my heart - I'm not sure why it took me this long to update, really. Performance anxiety, maybe. Maybe this couple is a bit _too _dear to my heart.

I'll probably continue it. Thank Savvy, again. XD

And... I'm not really the type to ask for review, because I figure if you like it well enough you'll do it anyway, and it also always feels tacky to come out and ask point-blank. But I'll break my usual rules and say that I'd really appreciate it if you did - mostly because I feel that reviews are a wonderful motivator, and I think I need it for this story.

So yeah, um. How do you like it so far? 8D

-Till next time!


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